All Grown Up! Review/Transcript
Chuckie: 'Knock, knock! Kimi, pretend you're a girl. ''(Kimi is shocked) (Intro) I suppose one of the most common questions that people had watching the Rugrats'' ''is what each of these characters would look like a little bit older. Apparently the answer is that the Rugrats grew up to be '''total assholes. I wanted to be nice on this show, and from my memory, I didn't think that this one was that bad. But no, this show is a lot worse than I remembered. This show has so many problems, that I don't know where to begin. All Grown Up! ''stars the original ''Rugrats ''as 11 or, 12-year-olds. I don't know exactly how old they are in this show. Angelica does have her 13th birthday as the first season's finale, but no matter how old they are, I-I don't know if you haven't noticed, but a kid who's like 11 years old isn't someone I'd call "all grown up." The title is stupid, and in hindsight it actually makes this show hard to look up. But that's the least of the problems here. The main problem is the '''characters'. Our main Rugrats have developed into their own people, and from what I can tell that is not a good thing. Remember Chuckie from the original Rugrats? In that show he was a bit of a whiner, but his cowardice was endearing. As a pre-teen, Chuckie is no longer cowardly. In the first episode, he's so concerned with being boring that he starts playing pranks, and ends up getting his best friend Tommy into trouble, almost desperate '''to get caught. When they do get caught, he demands getting hit with a wrestling move by the vice principal. In episode two, he's ditching class to avoid a fitness test. In episode three, he ends up spying on Kimi's new boyfriend, acting like a complete and total asshat. And once again, skipping class to do so. In the next episode, he creates a fake identity to get with a girl, '''repeatedly lying. Seriously, he has ''no ''redeeming qualities and the other characters do not fare much better. At least, the ones who do ''have a personality. Then there's Tommy. In the episode that basically introduces his character, one of the first things that he does is yell at all of his friends who are trying to help him make a movie, and when they aren't working, he has absolutely no hangups about filming them without their knowledge or consent, to the point of following them around in his own little sadistic hidden camera show. These characters are called out eventually for their actions in the show, yes, but these aren't exactly things that you should have to tell anyone not to do. For example, '''don't drive your goddamn bicycle in front of a truck to get it to stop! '''I-I thought that Dil was the one who was dropped on his head, not Chuckie. I-I guess one of the traits carried on into the next generation here is the stupidity and ignorance of the world around these people. The only one of the original Rugrats that is tolerable in this series is Dil. This series fixed Dil '''so much'. In the original show, Dil was nothing more than a pooping, crying waste of space that contributed nothing to the show and broke the rules of the Rugrats ''universe ['Caption: I am sparing you from the annoying crying.] Dil is so much better in All Grown Up!. Now he's this crazy, awesome kid who goes by his own beat. He's weird with all kinds of strange interests and habits. And if you remember something about this show, it's probably going to be Dil. But the weirdest thing about the kid is that he actually seems to have a moral compass. In this show, Tommy is no longer that "brave explorer" that he was in the original...he's now a filmmaker! Which...makes sense I guess. Chuckie is the school delinquent! I know that he's never called a delinquent or anything, but, show don't tell, remember? And Chuckie has been in the vice principal's office way more than the supposed "bad kid" like Z. Each of the characters have quite a bit of a difference from their original inception, from the original series. I-I definitely get why. People develop a lot over the years as they grow and change, and doing something like starting school and experiencing the world around you for the first time is bound to imprint on who you are. I mean, think about it. Do you still act like you did as a baby? If the answer to that question is "yes," you should probably stop watching this video and focus on fixing that. This presents a problem though in the terms of making a spinoff show. It's understandable that the kids would act very little like they did in the original Rugrats, but the question I have to ask in that case is: if every single character acts differently than they did in the original show, why not make a brand new show from the ground up with entirely new characters? And no, money is not an answer. While All Grown Up! ''had the most-viewed premiere out of any Nicktoon, its interest quickly waned and it's not really looked back fondly upon, and there are many reasons for that. ''All Grown Up! as a title, kinda has a double meaning here. As I've stated, someone who is 11 or 12 like the Rugrats here are definitely not "all grown up." The characters in this show are written in a way to ''desperately ''show off their maturity. The writing in this show is incredibly awkward. This is because these characters are not written like '''children, but like older teens. This is one of the main problems of the show and I think it's one that everyone brings up. They wanted to make a show about 11-year-old kids, but they didn't know how to write 11-year-old kids. They have a vocabulary and habits of teenagers with moral compasses of 4-year-olds. The only kid who acts realistically like a kid, oddly enough, is Dil, who is shown to be the most "out-there" and weird. It's really, really awkward when Lil tries to claim how mature she is, when she gets into petty squabbles that even 7-year-olds would cringe at. This show takes The Sims attitude towards childhood. The second you learn to walk, you're at the same level of maturity until you're a teenager. 4-year-old? 12-year-old? Doesn't matter! They all act the same and they're all interested in the same exact things! It's telling that Klasky Csupo didn't like working on this show, and it's a damn shame that this 'is the one that they ended on. Even though, I will have to admit, this is probably their best animation work, in terms of all of the Nicktoons. For once, the people ''actually look like people, this looks like an actual cartoon, where these shapes are not just some weird, abstract interpretations of the world around them. It actually follows the "Rules and Principles of Animation," and it doesn't look godawful. And that's a good thing too because after As Told by Ginger, I don't think I could take another bad day with them. Is All Grown Up! ''the worst Nicktoon ever? No, I probably wouldn't even put it in the top 10. But, like I said, the characters ''do ''learn the lessons at the end when they make the most '''horrible '''screwups, but the show is just '''so '''confused. It's a spinoff where none of the characters act like their original selves in a completely different genre, too. They're now in an age group that it seems like the writers don't know how to write, created by a studio who didn't wanna work on it. I mean it's better than the other ''Rugrats ''spinoff, which I will not be covering in this marathon, but that's neither here nor there. Yeah, no, I'm not reviewing ''Pre-School Daze, cause it's not an official Nicktoon, it was going to be, but when they learned of the disaster that it was, they scrapped it and they put their four episodes they had into one big special. That nobody likes. The only thing that this show does for me nowadays, is show me why a ''Rugrats ''spinoff is so desperately not needed, and it does not give me high hopes for the new one that was announced. You know, after they ran the original show into the ground and made whatever this is. Is this show "atrocity bad" though? I'd say yes. Although...just barely. Most of the episodes clock in as a "meh." But there's a great deal of episodes that I could make a review on because this show does get ''surprisingly ''mean. Whether it be this new character, Savannah, making her birthday the same day as Angelica's just to swipe her birthday guests, Susie getting scammed out of a thousand bucks because she's an idiot, or, this is my favorite moment. In one episode, Angelica complains about the gross food that the cafeteria is serving, like...fish, and relish and aspic. She challenges the chef to make something normal. He gets so offended, that he makes the food blindfolded, cracking in eggshells and pouring in dish soap. The kids eat it and Angelica gets blamed when they all start throwing up! I know Angelica wasn't liked in the original show, but let's just say that they hit her with a karma stick in this one. It '''honestly gets very hard to watch sometimes. I don't even know what else to say about it. I-I didn't want to hate this one as much as I did. I really wanted to say that...this was some sort of "underrated classic" that people were just being too harsh on. But no. Not only is it bad, it's worse than I remembered. Maybe it gets better later on in the series, but after season 1, I don't know why anyone would want ''to continue. At least the theme song is good. Like, like, really good. Like, too good for the series. I-I-I don't know what to say, ''All Grown Up! ''should just grow up. '''Announcer: '''Coming up next on Nickelodeon... ''(Shows clip of the My Life as a Teenage Robot theme song) (End Credits Theme: "Emika's Song (You're a Friend to Me)" from the Rugrats All Grown Up! special) Category:Nick-o-Rama Category:Transcripts